Before me, seated at a table, was a very fat personage with a black
skull cap perched upon its head. Its face was possessed of an enormous
nose, on which pince-nez precariously roosted; otherwise the face was
large, whiskered, very German and had three chins. Extraordinary
creature. Its belly, as it sat, was slightly dented by the table-top,
on which table-top rested several enormous tomes similar to those
employed by the recording angel on the Day of Judgment, an inkstand or
two, innumerable pens and pencils, and some positively fatal looking
papers. The person was dressed in worthy and semi-dismal clothes amply
cut to afford a promenade for the big stomach. The coat was of that
extremely thin black material which occasionally is affected by clerks
and dentists and more often by librarians. If ever I looked upon an
honest German jowl, or even upon a caricature thereof, I looked upon
one now. Such a round fat red pleasant beer-drinking face as reminded
me only and immediately of huge meerschaum pipes, Deutsche Verein
mottos, sudsy seidels of Wurtzburger, and Jacob Wirth’s (once upon a
time) brachwurst. Such pin-like pink merry eyes as made me think of
Kris Kringle himself. Such extraordinarily huge reddish hands as might
have grasped six seidels together in the Deutsche Küchen on 13th
street. I gasped with pleasurable relief.
Monsieur le Gestionnaire looked as if he was trying very hard, with the
aid of his beribboned glasses and librarian’s jacket (not to mention a
very ponderous gold watch-chain and locket that were supported by his
copious equator) to appear possessed of the solemnity necessarily
emanating from his lofty and responsible office. This solemnity,
however, met its Waterloo in his frank and stupid eyes, not to say his
trilogy of cheerful chins—so much so that I felt like crying “Wie
gehts!” and cracking him on his huge back. Such an animal! A contented
animal, a bulbous animal; the only living hippopotamus in captivity,
fresh from the Nile.
He contemplated me with a natural, under the circumstances, curiosity.
He even naively contemplated me. As if I were hay. My hay-coloured head
perhaps pleased him, as a hippopotamus. He would perhaps eat me. He
grunted, exposing tobacco-yellow tusks, and his tiny eyes twittered.
Finally he gradually uttered, with a thick accent, the following
extremely impressive dictum:
“_C’est l’américain._”